


Odysseus Was An Asshole

by Apetslife



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of mob violence, Non-explicit descriptions, Pirates, Reconciliation, S4 Episode 10, Spoilers, Very bad memories, mentions of rape/non con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 06:49:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10531140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apetslife/pseuds/Apetslife
Summary: "War looks very different from the deck of a ship, the ranks of a battalion than it does from the bloody streets of a town that had no part in starting it, or fighting it. Only dying in it."A conversation on the way to Savannah.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, I’ve been both ecstatic and sad about the finale since watching it. About 75% of me is thrilled that it wasn’t the rocks fall everyone dies that I was fearing, and rejoicing in Jack and Max and Anne ruling all, and James and Thomas reuniting, and Rogers getting his comeuppance. And the other 25% is mourning for James Flint and Madi Scott and John Silver, who all, to my mind, ended up with major doses of bitter in their sweet. This is my small attempt at having Flint and Silver talk through at least a tiny bit of that, to bring some light into their relationship before it moves offscreen forever.

“Has he eaten?” Silver stops Ben Gunn outside the door to the mess with a hand on his arm, and is therefore only gently knocked into the wall by the sideways wallow of the ship as she slides along a massive swell. 

“Some,” Ben nods, and shifts past him on down the hall. None of the men are best pleased with either of them right now, but Silver can’t honestly bring himself to care. James is eating, which is good news, and he unlocks the door of the small reinforced cabin and limps inside.

The chains are long enough for relatively free movement inside the cabin, but Silver had been taking no chances, and Flint is bound wrist and ankle to iron-cast bolts in the wall that would normally stabilize twelve pound guns. Flint had raised a cooly mocking eyebrow at him as he’d fastened them on three days ago, but he’s seen this man get out of worse places before. He, of all people, will not make the mistake of underestimating James Flint.

Flint doesn’t so much as glance up at him as he locks the door again behind himself.

“Evening,” he says quietly, and sets aside his crutch, hopping carefully to the chair and settling into it. 

Flint stares at his hands, folded between his knees. He’s sitting slumped on the edge of the hammock, swinging slightly with the movement of the ship. 

“We’ll be in Savannah in two days,” Silver continues, as if he’d gotten an answer. “Wind’s blowing us southeast a bit in this squall, but we should be able to make up time. Have you thought of what you’ll say to him yet? When you see him. Thomas, I mean.”

That gets a small reaction; Flint tips his chin up far enough to pin Silver with cold, narrowed eyes. Yes, the chains had definitely been a good idea.

“You could quote the Odyssey at him, I suppose, or the Bible, as you did with me whenever you didn’t know what to say. Though I _might_ not use the Odyssey. What an ass that man was. Sailing around the world, lost on adventures, traveling to all these marvelous places. Didn’t fight a war, didn’t so much as face a proper mutiny, and then whines on for days about his hardships after? And disguises himself so his poor wife won’t know him when he wanders back in? Hardly an example I’d like to follow.” The further they get from the war, from the treasure chest, from the dark and grief and pain of that island, the horror of the sack of Nassau, the more Silver’s words seem to be coming back to him.

He’d been downright chatty once, he recalls.

“Perhaps poetry would be best,” he muses, settling more comfortably into his chair. “Something romantic. I’m sure you have something appropriate ready to hand.”

“Shut up,” Flint blurts suddenly, and Silver jumps at the sound of his voice. He hasn’t heard it in four days, and the normally rich, smooth, full tones sound like cannonballs scraped together in the hold, or rocks grinding, rough and raw and bitter. “Just shut up.”

“I don’t think I will,” he says, after a long moment. “You won’t speak to me, after all. And there’s not much to do at the moment, with course set and the ship well-crewed.” He looks aside, not wanting to see those eyes any more. “Perhaps I just want to take my chance, while I still have it.”

“You might not have imprisoned me at all,” Flint rasps. “You could have babbled at me for years.”

“Weeks or months, you mean? Before we were crushed under the heel of the full might of the British Empire?” He leans forward, chest tight, throat suddenly aching with the need to find the right words, for once. To make himself heard, to say the right thing, to get through. “If we had won that first battle at Nassau. If we had taken her and the island, and the plantations, all easily. If that had gone to plan and the colonies had rallied. Then, _maybe_ then, I could have stood beside you to prosecute this war. But not now. Not when so much has gone wrong from the outset, and so many have died. They would never have let Nassau go, never have let the Maroon War go uncrushed. We would have been snuffed out before we’d even started. You, and Madi, and her mother, and our friends, our allies, all the rest. Gone. And nothing left but horror.”

“You don’t know that--”

“ _I do know that._ ” His voice rings in his own ears like it did when he was a terrified child of twelve, and it hangs echoing in the silent air for long heartbeats. Slowly, Flint sits up properly. His face is changed, now, suddenly free of the blank mask he’d worn since Skeleton Island. His eyes are searching Silver’s face, wide and worried, and it’s so familiar and so dear that John feels a stinging behind his eyes that has nothing to do with smoke from the lamp.

“Tell me,” Flint says quietly. “Tell me.”

Silver swallows hard. He'd sworn once that he would never. But this man, who would lay down his life for Madi. For John himself. Who has come so close to doing so willingly, over and over. Who knows his mind and heart and hopefully his soul, if there is such a thing left to know.

“The Spanish and the English have been at war for a long time,” he says eventually, carefully, his voice strange and thin. He can’t look at Flint’s eyes. “Towns along the coast are...are sometimes taken, and re-taken, and taken again. Mobs rise. And turn. Mindless brutality. The wealthy flee, but where will the poor go? Women and children are hit hardest. Rape. Murder. Sold into slavery or whorehouses. Pressed into service on the ships, to labor or please the men.” 

He steels himself and finally meets Flint’s eyes, and sees nothing there but quiet green. “I’ve been told I look a great deal like my mother. I last saw her when I was thirteen.” He takes a huge, sobbing breath to refill lungs that are burning, aching, like he’s drowning. “And then the battle shifts and the ships and soldiers move on, and all that’s left is the blood and pain and misery of people who never had anything to do with it in the first place. Until the next time they come. War looks very different from the deck of a ship, the ranks of a battalion than it does from the bloody streets of a town that had no part in starting it, or fighting it. Only dying in it.”

There’s silence when he finishes, and he drops his head, suddenly exhausted. He owes Flint this, though, at least. For Madi. For Silver himself. For bringing him to life.

Chains clink quietly and he imagines Flint is shifting, and then there’s a hand on his bent head, just resting there. It’s warm, gentle, and he lets out a shuddering sigh.

“I understand why you didn’t tell me when I asked.” Flint’s voice is still rough with shouting and disuse, but the cannonball harshness is gone. “It is an awful tale to hear about anyone, much less someone I hold so dear. But I do not believe that your story is in any way irrelevant to who you are. You are still the best of us. And now I am even more assured of your strength.”

“Shut up,” Silver chuckles wetly, surprising himself, and lifts a hasty hand to scrub at his eyes, which are suddenly welling over. 

“Just a moment ago you were entreating me to speak,” Flint says, and Silver can’t quite believe it, but when he chances a glance, yes, there’s a small smile curling the edge of his mouth, and his eyes are soft.

The hammock hangs higher than the chair, so when Silver bends under the weight of that hand in his hair, his forehead comes easily to rest on Flint’s thigh. “I am sorry,” he says into rough cloth and hard muscle. “I am so sorry. I never meant to betray you. I could not see another way for you to live, and her, and all of us.”

“I know,” Flint says back, and now there are two hands on his head, and fingers moving slowly, stroking, calming him. “I see it now. I know, and I understand.”

Someday, perhaps, there will be forgiveness. Right now, this is more than he had dreamed to have, and Silver is content.

“I still want to know what you plan to say to Thomas.”

“If this madness proves true, I will think of something,” Flint murmurs above him, and Silver is so tired, and right now, he is safe. “I probably won’t know until I see him myself,” and that voice has a touch of wonder in it now, maybe even hope, “but I will send you a letter once I’m recovered from whatever that reunion may be, and tell you. If he will have me, and when you talk yourself into Madi’s good graces again, you must come and see us when we’re settled. Both of you. I would have all the people I love in one place, at least once, so that I can look around at you all and be astonished at my great good fortune.”

John’s eyes are closed, and he’s smiling. “He would be a fool not to have you.”

“Well, he was not that when last I saw him,” Flint’s voice is a different kind of rough, now, but his hand never stops its stroking. 

“I will not come ashore with you,” Silver says quietly, suddenly, from the safe darkness of Flint’s lap, hidden behind his hair. “I would not interfere with that, or insinuate myself into it. But I will look for your letter, and I will come.”

“All right,” Flint says, and it’s quiet, and calm, and Silver breathes deep for the first time in as long as he can remember. “All right.”


End file.
